


Vibrant Moments

by pendragonness



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, kept in canon with the film, the beginnings of the Stormpilot relationship, vague sentimental drabble is all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 22:55:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5558693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendragonness/pseuds/pendragonness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a saying that if you name something, you're already attached to it. This applies to renegade Stormtroopers as much as anything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vibrant Moments

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to pin my feelings about the Stormpilot ship down a bit better, so this is a rough first attempt at doing so. The primary inspiration came from a mild annoyance that 98% of Stormpilot fics I'm seeing take place after TFA, with Finn in hospital, and I wanted to try for something different.
> 
> Hopefully I can come up with something better after this.
> 
> -Also, the dialogue is only kept roughly in line with the film.

“FN-..what?”

  
“FN-2187.”

  
“How about 'Finn', alright? I'm gonna call you 'Finn'.”

  
A name, he has a name now, as though he's a regular person, with a voice and will and identity. And Poe Dameron the best Resistance pilot in the galaxy has given him the name. FN-2187 feels a lightness in his chest, an elation that leaves him breathless and makes his blood rush. He wants to laugh at it, because of it, this sensation of existing as a companion to someone else. He does laugh, and the charismatic pilot behind him laughs with him. Their voices fit as if they've always done this, laughed together. FN-2187 is Finn and he exists to someone.

-

Making new companions (friends?) was still new to Finn, and in its newness, his attachments were overly strong, very fast. So when it looked like Poe, good and able Poe Dameron, was dead and gone within minutes of their connection, the loss came like a crevice in his stomach. But then came the dazzling sensation that was Rey and she hit him with a force that was enough to distract most of his distress over the loss of Poe. Finn liked her eyes and her voice and the way she hit first and asked questions later. He didn't understand any of her and he wanted to, very much. He just wanted that damn rolling robot to give them a little time alone.

-

But Poe Dameron wasn't dead. Finn saw the dark curls, damp with sweat, get shaken out after the pilot removed their helmet, and he realized he knew those shoulders, that build. One aspect of his training that had stayed so far was his ability to recall details. Boy, did he appreciate that. He shouted the pilot's name, and heard his own returned – his name, the name Poe gave him – and then their chests thumped together in an embrace that felt more intimate than anything the new 'Finn' had ever yet experienced.

  
Poe pulled back to look at him more clearly. He kept his hands affectionately on Finn's shoulders as he did; Finn was intensely aware of it.

  
“What are you doing here?”

  
“It's a long story – but you, I thought you were dead! The crash-”

  
“I got out. I don't know what happened, I just woke up alone in the sand. I thought you were gone for good.”

  
“I found the wreckage, but you were missing-”

  
“Is that my jacket?”

  
Finn felt like a child caught playing dress-up. “Oh, sorry, I-” He started to shrug it off but was stopped by the dusty pilot, who smiled warmly and stared at him with layers of affection that Finn had never seen before and therefore didn't know how to interpret. But he liked it.

Poe watched this kid shift and grin and tremble at everything he said and he laughed about it, to himself. Finn was eager, nervous, excitable – erratic and emotional in ways Poe had almost forgotten about, so long had he been in service, where he was counted on to be focused and sure. They were both soldiers but not of the same make, and Finn seemed more truly human than Poe sometimes felt. This young man was a fresh taste in his mouth. He liked it.

-

“Finn?”

  
Poe came calling for him, just after the council with General Organa had decided their plan of attack on Starkiller. Finn was sitting outside, knees pulled in, teeth worrying his bottom lip. At his name, he scrambled to his feet.

  
“Poe. How, uh, how'd you know I was here?”

  
“BB-8 said he'd seen you.”

“That droid is a serious blabber-mouth.”

  
Poe grinned, flashing the gaps in his teeth, and Finn had to duck his head and look somewhere else.

  
A steady hand rested on his arm.

  
“Hey, you okay?” Poe strained forward to look Finn in the eye, his voice low, and Finn felt like an elated child again. An elated child that was terribly afraid.

  
He turned away from his pilot friend and sat down again, none too delicately. Poe followed suit.

  
“Finn, bud, come on,” Poe was close, very close, and he nudged Finn's shoulder with his own.

  
Finn glanced at him, struggled to smile, just a little. Poe Dameron, piloting legend, dashing hero of the Resistance, was here wasting his time on a disfunctional stormtrooper. What a world he had fallen in to.

  
“You scared?” Poe kept his voice low and with that, it was warm. Just for him.

  
“Nah,” Finn shook his head, reminding himself to breathe even with Poe's shoulder leaning against him. A sideways glance revealed that the stern eyes of his pilot hero were zeroed intensely on his face. He swallowed. “A bit.”

  
“Cause I'm scared.”

  
“What?”

  
That did the trick – Finn looked at him, and Poe saw the open emotions of the young man, the honest feelings on display. His chest surged as if _he_ were the erratic boy and not an experienced pilot in his thirties.

  
“I get scared every mission. Everyone does. It means you care.”

  
“I-we-...Troopers aren't supposed to get scared. They _don't_. It means you're weak and doubtful.” Finn looked panicked for a moment. “I know I'm not a Stormtrooper anymore, I never really was one, but...but I don't know if I'm strong enough for this kind of stuff, Poe.”

  
“Well, maybe you're not, but that's why you've got Rey.”

  
Finn barely smiled at the joke and Poe's deep eyes searched him again. He reached over, impulsively, and wrapped an arm around Finn's shoulder, to pull the young man closer to him. Finn stiffened for only a fraction of a second and then his eagerness got the better of him.

  
“I put my life in your hands the moment I met you, Finn, and you haven't done me wrong so far. There's more to you than you think, pal. Don't worry.”

  
Poe sat with an arm around Finn's broad shoulders and Finn crouched with his ear pressed into Poe Dameron's chest. He heard a steady heartbeat and the sigh of breath, and forced his own to find the same rhythm.

  
Poe swallowed as Finn fidgeted closer. This ex-Trooper was practically just a kid compared to him. An emotional mess of a kid. And Poe liked him, very much.

  
He rested his cheek against Finn's head and took a deep breath, trying to think ahead, to prepare for the nigh-suicide mission he was soon to embark on while Finn attempted an impossible ground attack with the help of Rey, a Wookie, and an aged smuggler.

  
He wished there was more time.


End file.
